The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (138 page)

“Significant, Holmes?”

“Why, surely so. When a person comes to our rooms here all the way from the Sussex coast while we are at breakfast, and, though correctly dressed, appears with a mis-buttoned boot and with a small shaving cut upon his right cheek, something which I fear you failed to notice, then there is only one conclusion to be drawn.”

“And that is?”

“That he left home in a very great hurry precisely in order to see myself as soon as he possibly could.”

“But, no, Holmes,” I could not help expostulating. “He told us that he had an appointment in town elsewhere. No doubt it was for an early hour and he is already on his way there again.”

“You think so? Well, perhaps we shall soon see.”

At that moment Billy came back into the room, a look of sharp triumph on his always eager face.

“Victoria Station, Mr. Holmes, sir,” he announced without preliminary.

“There you are, Watson.”

“But I don't quite understand. What about Victoria Station?”

“That it was to there that Dr. Smyllie directed his cab,” Holmes replied. “I made an opportunity to leave the room and instruct Billy to wait out on the steps and overhear any directions our visitor might give. You surely did not think I was so concerned about our dinner tonight that I went out for that purpose?”

“No, no. Of course not. So Dr. Smyllie is returning directly to Hove. What do you see as the significance of that?”

“Simply that he is unduly concerned that I should take no action as the result of that letter. Now, if what might seem to be a mere trifle caused him to go to so much trouble, I think we should make all haste to follow in his footsteps. You were consulting Bradshaw, I believe.”

Although Sherlock Holmes is a master of disguise, and I have frequently seen him so transformed that it has taken me no little time to recognize him even at close quarters, it has been seldom in the course of our adventures that he has called upon me to assume an appearance other than my own. At Hove, however, once we had found St. George's School and examined the neighbourhood round about, he did require me to adopt a disguise. So it was that I found myself on the afternoon of that day waiting in the road where the school stood, clad in a not altogether sweet-smelling coat belonging to the owner of a four-wheeler whom Holmes had persuaded for a consideration to lend us both vehicle and garment. From where I sat high up on the driving seat I could see in the garden of the house next to St. George's, a residence that had luckily chanced to be unoccupied, the stooping figure of a gardener methodically digging in a flower-bed close to the fence dividing the two premises. Had I not known for a fact that this man was Holmes himself I would not, even at the comparatively short distance that separated us, have recognized him.

I had not been in position long before I heard the clangour of a bell from within the school and saw a few moments later some score of youngsters come pouring out into the grounds to play. None of them, I think, paid any heed to the old gardener at work on the other side of the fence. But when, after a little, one of the boys happened to go near, Holmes called out something in a quiet voice, and before long I was able to see another of the happy youngsters running and playing there, a handsome red-headed lad, go over and lean against the fence just where the gardener was at work. But no one who was not within a yard or two of the boy could have seen that he was engaged in conversation with the man on the far side. It was a conversation that lasted a full quarter of an hour, and at its end the gardener carefully scraped clean his spade and made his way off, trudging along as if well tired after a good day's labour.

I jerked the reins in my lap and the four-wheeler's old horse set off at a sedate walk. Round the next corner I saw waiting for me a tall, upright, and sprightly figure resembling not at all the ancient gardener in the empty garden, for all that his clothes were not unalike.

In a moment Holmes was seated in the cab behind me and telling me the result of his unconventional consultation with master Phillip Hughes.

“It is much as I thought, Watson. It seems that in the entrance hall of the school there is kept in a place of honour, in a locked glass case, a copy of Algernon Smyllie's book
Poems of Childhood
, together with a letter to the poet from Her Majesty herself. It is the custom for the chief boy of the school, the Dux as they call him, to turn one page of the book each day. Now, just a week ago our friend, young Hughes, who had omitted to learn the evening before a prescribed passage from Horace, came downstairs very early to, as he said, ‘mug up the beastly stuff.' Glancing at the display case to see which in particular of (again I use his own words) ‘the vicious verses' was on show, since if he failed to present his passage of Horace correctly it would
be his punishment by tradition to learn that poem, he saw, not entirely to his dismay, that someone had poured ink with conspicuous liberality all over the page, which happened indeed to be that on which appear the quatrains you yourself so much admire, the ones entitled ‘For My Infant Son.' ”

“Ah, yes. ‘Take up the spangled web of words, Then lay it gently on my grave.' ”

“Exactly. Though I fear young Hughes does not share your enthusiasm. However, that is not the end of his account. Scarcely had he, he told me, absorbed the fact of the desecration than he heard behind him the voice of his headmaster which a moment later, when he too had perceived what had happened, was raised in the most terrible ire. An anger that persisted, when no culprit would come forward, and soon resulted in the cancellation of the long-honoured St. George's Day holiday.”

“And are you satisfied, Holmes, that young Hughes did not himself commit the very act he summoned you to investigate?”

“Yes, I flatter myself that no young man of twelve years of age could long deceive me. And, besides, there is no possible advantage to him in committing the crime.”

“I suppose not. Yet, pray, consider. Youngsters are notoriously mettlesome. They revel in all sorts of pranks. Why, I remember from my own schooldays—”

“I dare say, Watson. And I am very aware of the nature of schoolboys. It would not have been inconceivable that one of these youngsters had crept down in the middle of the night and played this trick were it not for two circumstances.”

“Yes?”

“First, as I explained to you at the outset of the affair, the act would be certain to have become known to at least one of his fellow pupils, aware of each other's habits and inclinations as schoolboys invariably are. And, secondly, the case in which the book is kept is always locked, and there are only two keys to it, one held by Dr. Smyllie himself and the other by his son, Arthur, a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three who assists in the running of the establishment.”

“Then it seems to me that we must find some way of speaking to young Arthur Smyllie, if you are indeed satisfied that the cabinet can be opened in no other way than by its keys.”

“Watson, I could not yet be satisfied of that myself. But Phillip Hughes and his fellow pupils most certainly are so, and I am well disposed to take their word for it, as interested parties.”

Holmes had ascertained from young Hughes that Mr. Arthur Smyllie was in the habit of taking an evening stroll. “The young shaver intimated, Watson, that the Lion Hotel might be his destination, a suggestion that I felt bound to scout.” But it was outside the Lion Hotel that we waited that evening in the expectation of accosting the son of the headmaster of St. George's School. I was myself a little apprehensive over what reception we might be given when we disclosed the reason for our seeking his company. But I need not have worried. The moment Holmes greeted the young fellow, a fine upstanding ruddy-faced specimen of British manhood, and pronounced his own name, his face lit up in an expression of profound delight.

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he exclaimed. “Why, I could not have wished more dearly to meet any other soul upon earth. And is this Dr. Watson? Sir, I have read your accounts of Mr. Holmes's cases with the keenest interest. I must tell you, Mr. Holmes, that I am of a scientific turn myself. Indeed, I hope to be leaving for London at the start of the next university year to read for a degree in the physical sciences.”

“A most commendable ambition,” Holmes said. “But won't you miss the rewards of school-mastering?”

The young man grinned.

“Keeping all those cheeky young devils in order for my father? Well, I shan't altogether miss that, I promise you. And yet you're right, Mr. Holmes, of course. There are rewards for a
schoolmaster, and I dare say I shall miss the little blighters in the end after all.”

Holmes offered the young man some hospitality and we all three repaired to the hotel to discuss a bottle of wine. It was some time before Holmes was able to bring the conversation round to the affair of St. George's School so keen was Arthur Smyllie to learn all he could of scientific methods of detection. But at last Holmes contrived an adroitly phrased question about our guest's present life among his father's “little blighters.”

“Well, yes, Mr. Holmes, they can be nothing but pests at times, I admit, for all that at other times they are delightfully willing to learn every blessed thing I can teach them.”

“Up to all sorts of tricks, however, I make no doubt,” Holmes said.

Arthur Smyllie laughed.

“Oh, yes, indeed. Can you guess what their latest escapade has been?”

“I am sure I cannot.”

“Well, one of the little beasts has poured ink all over a precious copy of my father's book
Poems of Childhood
. You know that I am the only heir of the man who wote ‘For My Infant Son'?”

“Are you, indeed, Mr. Smyllie? And you say that one of your father's pupils poured ink on a copy of that book?”

“A copy, sir? More than just a copy, I assure you. A very precious one, signed by Her Majesty, no less, and enclosed in a glass case together with a letter from the Queen to my father. It really was too bad of the little beast who spoiled it. And yet…Well, to tell you the truth, that poem has hung round my neck like a millstone all my life, and I'm not altogether sorry that it was that particular page that received the inky deluge.”

“I'm surprised that the display case was left open when there are schoolboys about, always apt to carelessness and pranks.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Holmes, the case was never left open. Once a day, true, it is unlocked by the Dux of the school and a page is turned. But he always had to obtain a key from either my father or myself and to return it immediately.”

“But perhaps the case can be opened without benefit of key?”

“No, again, Mr. Holmes. It's stoutly locked, I can assure you.”

Holmes smiled.

“Why then,” he said, “it seems you have produced for me a mystery worthy of my best powers. Who committed the crime within the locked cabinet? And how was the deed done?”

Arthur Smyllie laughed aloud in delight.

“Yet, you know,” Holmes interjected with some acerbity, “if there were a problem of more importance but with the identical set of circumstances, it would not take me long to put my finger on the crux of it. If it were possible for a room or a cabinet to be opened except with its keys, then I should look pretty sharply to the holders of the keys, whoever they were, for my criminal.”

Young Smyllie lost his cheerful look in an instant.

“Mr. Holmes,” he said, “you are not suggesting that I defaced that book of my father's?”

“My dear sir, I am asking only if it has to be the holders of the keys and no one else who could gain access to the volume.”

Arthur Smyllie's face, formerly so ruddily cheerful, was white now as a sheet.

“Mr. Holmes,” he said, rising abruptly from the table, “I will bid you good night.”

He had left before either of us had had time to remonstrate.

“Holmes,” I asked, “is there some way to get into that display case without using either of its keys?”

“My dear Watson, you heard yourself Arthur Smyllie tell us that there was not.”

“Is there no other key then? A key that one of the boys could have obtained by some means?”

“If there were such a thing,” Holmes answered me, “we should have heard about it from Hughes. Nothing could keep its existence a secret within a school, believe me.”

“But then Arthur Smyllie must have defaced the book himself, as indeed his conduct just now can only lead us to believe. But why should he do such a thing? It escapes me.”

“Oh, come,” Holmes replied. “Did you not hear Arthur tell us that he is going to London University to read for a degree in science? Did you not hear how that poem of his father's, with its public plea to him to ‘take up the spangled web of words,' to become a poet in his turn, weighs like a millstone on him?”

I sighed. Holmes's words were only too convincing.

“Then I suppose that tomorrow we must go to Dr. Smyllie and tell him that no boy in his school committed the outrage,” I said.

“Yes, that certainly we must do.”

Our adventures in Hove were not, however, yet ended. We took the only room which the Lion had vacant for the night, and I know that I lay long restless thinking of the message that we had to deliver the next day, although it seemed to me that Holmes in the other bed slept soundly enough. So it was I who heard at an hour well after midnight an insistent creaking sound just outside our window. At first I took it for the action of the wind on the branches of the tree that grew close to the building at just that point. But before long I realized that the night was, in fact, singularly calm, and yet the creaking persisted.

Without waking Holmes, I slipped from my bed, put on slippers and a dressing-gown and looked about the darkened room for some weapon. At last I recalled that there was a good set of fire-irons in the chimney place. I crept across and secured the poker.